And WWI had as much to do with British mercantilism and colonialism as it did with anything else. They deeply resented German efforts to business around the world. One example, prewar, the Germans were planning a rail line to Baghdad. The British saw this as a trade threat and moved to stop it.
This kind of competition was rising worldwide at that time and the British hated it
Making the world safe for democracy is a joke. The average British soldier had no right to vote unless he owned property. The average soldier German had possessed the right to vote for over 30 years. One of the main British allies was Russia. At that time Russia was basically the last of the pure Monarchies of Europe. People in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Trans-Jordan, etc would all be very surprised to find that England was trying to establish any sort of democracy, much less anything like the American version.

It clearly wasn’t a war to make the world safe for democracy. It was motivated by baser interests.

And the Allies ignored American beliefs and pushed crushing reparations on Germany and as the Allies divided up German possessions in the Pacific, they made a deliberately insulting point of giving none of the spoils to our WWI ally,,, Japan.
The stage was now set for a world war.
Yes, WWI was economic, and WWII was caused by WWI.

26 posted on 11/19/2012 9:02:47 AM PST by DesertRhino
(I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but communists just ran for office.)